War has interrupted the means of trade not only but also the processes
of production. In Europe it is destroying men and resources wholesale
and upon a scale unprecedented and appalling. There is reason to fear
that the time is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of the
countries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their people what
they have hitherto been always easily able to do,--many essential and
fundamental things. At any rate, they will need our help and our
manifold services as they have never needed them before; and we should
be ready, more fit and ready than we have ever been.
It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usually
supplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of which
they are in constant need and without which their economic development
halts and stands still can now get only a small part of what they
formerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but empty
markets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the States,
great and small, of Central and South America. Their lines of trade have
hitherto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but to the
ports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe.
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